Yes, You Can Invest In Sonos Today

Never a bad idea to buy a good stock after a flood of bad press. I’m too lazy to do individual stocks these days but if I wasn’t I’d have been looking for a nice panic induced dip to buy into.

@Stanley_4 

Ha ha…

After I submitted the post I realized that using the word “Invest” might lead people to think I was referring to Sonos stock rather than buying its speakers. Oh well 😂

Sadly it looks like Sonos speaker prices aren’t showing a dip.

Maybe not sadly, the spouse has not retracted her pain and regret position until I actually have a room that could use another speaker. :-)

Hi AjTrek1.  I’m not sure you made a very convincing argument for the safety of buying into the Sonos ecosystem.  You have very high-end hardware (phone and routers) which obviously help it all to run smoothly in your environment.  The reality is that Sonos need to be able to operate in “real-world” network environments like it used to.

Maybe the new app/architecture will get there, maybe not.  I certainly hope they are investing in some janky second-hand network gear and phones to set up some more life-like testing environments in their R&D labs.  It is no good testing new architectures like this on the latest and greatest hardware.

Personally, I think they will eventually get there, although my money would be on them abandoning the new app and fixing the old app so that they can use it as a solid base for future development.  And firing the person who first said loudly that “this app code is too messy to support future development, let’s start from scratch” :-).

Thank you for your thoughts and video. Looks to work nicely. I think a quality Wi-Fi and network is essential now as you mention. Let’s hope the system could also work better on current setups in the future for those that have been affected (my 7-year-old router is still going strong).

So far I have found one feature that is better in the new app compared to the old app. That’s the System controls view (Swipe up on the Now Playing bar) where you can start/stop play in multiple rooms in that single UI. In the old 16.1 app I need to tap to go to the individual room view to start/stop (or have never used a similar view if it exists). Improvements to the Sonos Voice Control are also good. 

By the way, when I’ve needed to screen record on iPhone, I’ve found this useful to record and show also the touches. There still may not be a better way in iOS:

 or similar in writing: https://support.screenpal.com/portal/en/kb/articles/show-finger-taps-when-recording-your-screen-on-ios

Hi @ernmalley 

Thanks for your comments. However, I’m not sure what you mean about Sonos testing the app in “real-world” situations (I assume you mean network configurations)? 

My network hardware while offering a few more options to “tweak it” is no different from any router (or out-of-the-box Mesh network setup) on today’s market that is Wi-Fi 6. 

Quite frankly no one needs Wi-Fi 6 unless they have devices that can connect to Wi-Fi 6 and/or Wi-Fi 6e. I own several devices that can connect to the higher band widths, but they have nothing to do with Sonos.

Below is a table that explains past and future generations of the Wi-Fi standard.

With the exception of Wi-Fi standard 802.11a Sonos will operate on any Wi-Fi standard of 802.11g and above. This link details the Supported Wi-Fi modes and security standards for Sonos products.

Before I continue let me provide a little history on Sonos and Wi-Fi networks…

When I purchased my first Sonos gear dating back to the Play:5, (gen 1) Play:3, Play:1 and Sub (gen 1) Sonos did not advocate operating over home Wi-Fi. Although the 802.11g standard existed; network hardware such as routers did not contain the processing power to sustain a “chatty” system like Sonos. 

To overcome the issue of less than capable network hardware Sonos introduced the “Bridge” which created the SonosNet; which I described in my original post in this thread. The Bridge eventually gave way to the “Boost” which has also been discontinued. The Bridge and Boost both sold for $99 USD.

Consumers are a finicky breed as they always want more. The complaints back then mainly revolved around the issue of having to purchase a Bridge or Boost to have a stable Sonos system when it was advertised as a Wi-Fi speaker system. You may recall that I mentioned that Sonos places a lot of strain on a network being “chatty”. My point being that one Sonos speaker on home Wi-Fi would most likely work issue free. Start adding additional speakers throughout one’s environment and that’s when things became less than perfect on home Wi-Fi. Ergo the suggestion to use a Bridge or Boost.

With the advent of improved network hardware Sonos gradually moved away from the Boost and allowed its system to embrace home Wi-Fi. That’s when Sonos first started to expose the weaknesses in some home Wi-Fi setups.

Consumers wanted Brand A as a router and Brand B as a range extender/access point. Sonos doesn’t play well in those environments; nor Powerline internet/Wi-Fi. Can you imagine the infinite number of network configurations in the “real-world”.

So, getting back to your suggestion that Sonos to accurately fix the app…

• “I certainly hope they are investing in some janky second-hand network gear and phones to set up some more life-like testing environments in their R&D labs.  It is no good testing new architectures like this on the latest and greatest hardware”

What would be your recommendation for Sonos to invest in for accurate testing in terms of equipment? I know that’s a loaded question.😊

The bottom-line is that Sonos IMO will test their system using the available networking hardware on the market today. Maybe, Sonos will be able to make generic hardware recommendations such as a router should contain a processor that is “X”. If that’s possible. 

I don’t by any stretch of the imagination pretend to have the answer as to how Sonos should test the app and under what conditions. All that I know is that Sonos needs to fix things with the App in the right way and stay the path to resolve issues and restore missing features. Also continued transparency during the process directed to its customer base is paramount as well. 

I still believe buying Sonos gear is a viable option. Potential buyers need education on the fact that deployment of Sonos on their home network is not as simple as connecting a cell phone. Sonos will be (and is) much more demanding.

Hi AjTrek1,

AjTrek1 said...

Thanks for your comments. However, I’m not sure what you mean about Sonos testing the app in “real-world” situations (I assume you mean network configurations)? 

Hmmm.  Let me just scroll up the page a bit to see what I actually said…   Here it is, it looks like I said

The reality is that Sonos need to be able to operate in “real-world” network environments like it used to.

So, no need to assume, because that is exactly what I said.

Also, the history lesson about the old days of Sonos is irrelevant to anyone new entering the ecosystem.

My point about testing on janky old network configurations is simply because that is what most potential Sonos consumers will have.  Personally, my own single router is over five years old.  Sonos certainly should not limit their testing to “available networking hardware on the market today”.  Doing that will mask problems with their chatty speakers, especially as they seem to be getting much chattier.

Software developers working on fast hardware and network environments are the root cause of many issues with applications when they hit the real world.  I used to be a developer myself.  If I was running the dev team I would be trying to throttle their network throughput to force them to develop solutions that will work in a lowest-common-denominator environment.  I would also be turning network devices off occasionally to make sure that recovery from loss of network situations is smooth.

Aside from the above though, I basically agree with you.  I think it is probably safe to enter the ecosystem, because Sonos will eventually fix the problems.  But potential new buyers should be made very aware that at the moment, the more Sonos speakers they put into their home, the more likely they are to have problems.  Especially if their network gear is getting old.

What annoys me most about the current app situation is the arrogance of Sonos management in rolling it out in the first place.  I think this is what happens when you get MBA and Marketing dudes running a company that was founded by Engineers.

My point about testing on janky old network configurations is simply because that is what most potential Sonos consumers will have.  Personally, my own single router is over five years old.  Sonos certainly should not limit their testing to “available networking hardware on the market today”.  Doing that will mask problems with their chatty speakers, especially as they seem to be getting much chattier.

Hi @ernmalley, you are far more correct than you may realize! The majority of Sonos gear sold today uses 802.11n (aka Wi-Fi 4) rolled out in 2009. Just a few contemporary Sonos products use 802.11ac (aka Wi-Fi 5) rolled out in 2013. Sonos doc for reference …

https://support.sonos.com/en/article/supported-wifi-modes-and-security-standards-for-sonos-products

Virtually every Wi-Fi router sold today is 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6) or 802.11be (Wi-Fi 7). The point here is that none of the improvements baked into Wi-Fi 6 or 7 can be used with Sonos devices. The ‘good’ news is this greatly simplifies testing as every Wi-Fi router shipped in the past decade will be operating in legacy compatibility with Wi-Fi 4 and 5.

Happily mesh Wi-Fi is backward compatible with the legacy protocols. This is super-helpful as you correctly note that the new device firmware APIs are much chattier and challenge the maximum bandwidth of 802.11n, so long as Sonos devices are “spread across” multiple mesh satellites.

Bottom line: regardless of the ‘newness’ of your Wi-Fi router, as far as Sonos devices are concerned it is operating as a 2009 vintage Wi-Fi 4 router.

Tagging @sigh as a h/t to his ongoing great analysis.

Here in the UK, if you buy a decent broadband connection, the ISP should provide decent whole home WiFi as an option, and even guarantee the whole home WiFi. This is in the ISPs interest as they don’t want customers calling their call centres, so they provide a whole home WiFi, rather than letting their customer go out and buy some random $20 ‘WiFi extender’ and possibly make the network worse.

Investing money in a multi room music system, but not investing in reasonable quality ‘interconnects’ (local WiFi) does not make sense to me. I want to get the best out of my music system, and other devices that connect to my WiFi.

And where would you place devices like Echo? Bluesound? WiiM? Yamaha Musiccast?